Schools offer new, advanced courses

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, September 2, 2004

At the town's two elementary schools, a new report card format will provide more information about student performance, while three more advanced placement courses have been added to offerings at the high school.
The staff at Whisconier Middle School is undertaking four new initiatives this fall.
"The first is that we are looking to put in a character education program that is the state initiative, 'Don't Laugh at Me,'�" principal Eugenia Slone said.
Staff members were trained in the program in August and it will start this month.
The second initiative calls for the staff to receive extra training to help students write more.
"We need to have students do more writing in math and science and social studies classes, not just in their literacy classes," Slone said.
The middle school students also will have more focus on problem solving skills in math and begin using a revised science curriculum that is aligned with the state standards, she said.
Center School and Huckleberry Hill Elementary School staff have worked together on new report cards. Center School's report card was a standard-based form but not Huckleberry's and both will be created on the computer for the first time this fall.
Now, students in both schools will be measured on how they meet benchmarks in different subject areas rather than given letter grades.
"We're trying to look more holistically at a student's progress," said Lynne Covil, the elementary curriculum specialist for literacy and social studies curriculum specialist. She worked with math specialist Debbie Brownell on the report cards.
"For instance, we will say if students are writing independently for an extended time or if they can draft and revise. We are giving parents a lot of information about the work, rather than just an A," Covil said. "There is a trend in education for this and we want to look at students this way."
The teachers and specialists determined the benchmarks for each subject area. Since the report cards are on the computer now, the benchmarks can be tweaked each year.
At Brookfield High, principal Richard Nabel added three advanced placement courses to the curriculum this fall.
Now there will be 14 advanced placement classes, though not every course will be offered every semester.
Two of the new classes, AP psychology and AP physics, were offered before but did not have adequate enrollment to run them. The school requires 10 students to offer the course.
The third new course is AP English for juniors.
As the school increases its tougher offerings, students take them, Nabel said.
"In 2004, we had more students taking AP exams than in the past five years," Nabel said.
Now, the high school offers AP English to juniors and seniors; five social studies courses, including United States, European and Modern History and American Government; and the new psychology course. It also offers AP Spanish and French courses, and three science courses - AP biology, chemistry and the new physics course - and two math courses, AP calculus and statistics.